Dr Seuss labelled racist as artist boycott children’s book festival over his Mulberry Street mural
The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum in Springfield plans to remove a mural of a Chinese character after three authors said they would boycott a children’s book festival because the image reinforced racial stereotypes.
Mike Curato, Mo Willems, and Lisa Yee said the mural from Seuss’ first book, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” features a “jarring racial stereotype of a Chinese man, who is depicted with chopsticks, a pointed hat, and slanted slit eyes.”
The Massachusetts museum it will replace the mural labelled “jarring racial stereotype.”
“We find this caricature of ‘the Chinaman’ deeply hurtful, and have concerns about children’s exposure to it,” the authors said in the letter posted Thursday on Twitter.
The Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno slammed the authors’ criticism and museum’s decision to remove the mural, asking “where do we draw the line?”
“This is political correctness at its worst, and this is what is wrong with our country,” he said in a statement, according to WWLP. “We have extreme fringe groups on both the right and the left dictating an agenda to divide instead of working together towards the betterment of our country.”
The book, published in 1937, was set on Mulberry Street in Springfield, the writer’s hometown.
“This is what Dr. Seuss would have wanted us to do. His later books, like ‘The Sneetches’ and ‘Horton Hears a Who,’ showed a great respect for fairness and diversity,” a statement from the Museum read, via MassLive. “Dr. Seuss would have loved to be a part of this dialogue for change. In fact, Ted Geisel himself said, ‘It’s not how you start that counts. It’s what you are at the finish.'”
